Soviet Ghosts Haunt the World Council of Churches

Soviet Ghosts Haunt the World Council of Churches By Mark D. Tooley FrontPageMagazine.com | August 25, 2006

As one of his formative spiritual experiences, a top official in the World Council of Churches (WCC) fondly recalls attending a Soviet-front group’s conference in the old Czechoslovakia. In a recent official WCC news report, the Swiss-based ecumenical council interviews Rev. Walter Altmann, a Brazilian Lutheran theologian, former head of the Latin American Council of Churches, and the new moderator the WCC's totalitarian-sounding "central committee." Currently, he also heads the 700,000 member Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil.

"As a young pastor, at the height of the military dictatorship in Brazil, I traveled semi-secretly to Prague in 1968 to take part as a delegate in the Christian Peace Conference," Altmann reminisces. There is no further comment about the CPC event, much less any note of regret.

The Christian Peace Conference (CPC) was founded by a Czech, pro-Marxist theologian in the late 1950’s, though even he abandoned the CPC when it refused to criticize the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Based in Prague, it operated as part of the phalanx of various Soviet-front groups for churchmen, labor leaders, journalists, and peace activists. Operating in alliance with the Soviet-created World Peace Council (WPC) in Helsinki, the CPC faithfully defended communism and Soviet global initiatives, from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, to martial law in Poland, to demands for Western disarmament. The CPC and the WPC, with other facades, were under the authority of the International Department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. They received most of their funding from the Soviet Peace Fund, much of which was raised through the Russian Orthodox Church.

Apparently, the CPC no longer actively exists. It survived the implosion of the Soviet Union long enough to denounce the U.S. liberation of Kuwait from Saddam Hussein in 1991. And it never fully abandoned the Old Religion (Marxism, of course, not Christianity). As one CPC official wrote in 1990, "Nothing would be more damaging to the integrity of CPC than to abandon or renounce or deny, under the pressure of contemporary events, our abiding and radical commitment to a socialist vision of society."

After Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, the CPC did express some regret for paying "too little attention to individual right sin Socialist countries," as recounted in Kent Hill’s The Soviet Union on the Brink. But the CPC planned to survive by battling the new phase of "world capitalism," which had begun its new "offensive through the internationalization of financial capital and the expansion of transnational companies." Still, without Soviet funding and ideological guidance, the CPC’s future was grim. The United Nations, with its usual dispatch, finally got around to de-recognizing the CPC as a non-governmental organization...in 2005.

During its salad days, the CPC was crucial in enlisting church groups to back Soviet foreign policy objectives. Its U.S. affiliate, Christians Associated for Eastern Europe (CAREE), was actually based in the Interfaith Center in New York, alongside the National Council of Churches and various U.S. denominational offices. Even more amazingly, during the 1980’s CAREE got funding for its Christian-Marxist dialogues from mainline Protestant agencies, Mennonites, and the U.S. Catholic Conference.

One-time CAREE chairman James Will admitted that "some Christians in the West see the CPC as an instrument of Communist propaganda." But he asserted, as reported in K. L. Billingsley’s From Mainline to Sideline, that the CPC is a "cooperative part of the ecumenical movement" and is "motivated by its own authentic Christian inspiration." CAREE made payments to CPC, and CAREE officials got free travel to CPC events on Soviet Aeroflot.

CPC leaders were active in the World Council of Churches (WCC), even serving on the WCC’s executive committee, and helping to ensure that the WCC was never critical of the Soviet bloc -- not that there was ever much chance of that. By the 1960’s and 1970’s, the WCC had essentially abandoned traditional Christian beliefs about salvation and evangelism. Instead, the WCC’s focus had become political and economic "liberation." The WCC’s agenda was almost indistinguishable from that of the CPC.

Many young theologians and pastors in the ecumenical movement, like the Rev. Walter Altmann, cheerfully attended CPC events. They were either naïve about the CPC’s role as a Soviet instrument or did not care.

Altman would devote much of his own subsequent career to espousal of Liberation Theology. "A particular interest of mine has been to seek convergences between the theology of the Reformation and liberation theology," Altmann recounts. "In the 1970s, at the time of the military dictatorships in Latin America, there was widespread close ecumenical cooperation in the field of human rights, with a significant contribution from the World Council of Churches."

Much of the ecumenical movement came to see socialism rather than free market democracy as the desirable alternative to military dictatorship in Latin America. Groups like the WCC actively supported Marxist liberation movement and even now refuse to criticize the Castro dictatorship, because it is "socialist." Those churches that abandoned traditional Gospel work in favor of leftist "social justice" have paid a price. Denominations like Altman’s Lutherans hardly have a bright future in Latin America, where there are at least 40 million evangelicals, many if not most of them Pentecostal.

In his recent WCC interview, Altmann noted the "the growth of Pentecostal churches" and expressed concern that "many of the new churches reject ecumenism and campaign against it, particularly if the Catholic Church is involved." Old evangelical-Catholic tensions are in some cases the factor for distrust of the ecumenical movement. But more broadly, the old ecumenism of the political and theological left has never had widespread, populist appeal in Latin America. Revealingly, the Latin American Council of Churches has depended primarily on money from the failing, and leftist old-line churches of North America and Western Europe.

Meanwhile, Altmann’s leadership at the WCC will be predictable, based on his past performance. At the start of the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein, he condemned the liberation of Iraq as possibly the greatest tragedy since World War II, evidently eclipsing even the Rwandan and Cambodian genocides, among others. After 9/11, Altmann joined an ecumenical conference in Washington, D.C., to denounce the U.S. military response and expressed hope that Americans might benefit from feeling "vulnerable."

In the 1990’s, Altmann wrote to both President Clinton and Fidel Castro, criticizing both for their supposedly equal extremism. He expressed special alarm about the Helms-Burton Act, which allows U.S. citizens to sue foreign companies that are profiting from U.S. assets in Cuba that Castro’s regime had seized.

Altmann had a four hour dinner with Castro in 1999, during which he explained how Martin Luther had challenged the Catholic Church. Of course, Castro responded that he could identify with the Protestant Reformer in that regard. The Cuban tyrant also hailed Jesus as a "great social revolutionary."

So the influence of the old Soviet-front Christian Peace Conference (CPC) lives on, through Altmann, and many others, in leadership circles of the WCC and other ecumenical and mainline church organizations around the world. Thankfully, these groups have a future about as bright as CPC’s was after the Soviet Union’s collapse.

March 12, 2006

Profiles in Subversion

“Bishop” Arafat

The PLO’s Alliance with the Moscow Church

Any observer who believed the Soviet Union to be “dead,” the Moscow Church to be Christian, and the PLO to be Muslim faced a rude awakening when all three recently joined forces to battle anti-Communists.

From the beginning, Communist repression and control of the Orthodox Church inside Russia left too many loose ends. During the 1920s, the legitimate church leadership fled the country and maintained continuity as the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCA), also known as the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), remaining an ever-present public challenge to the Moscow Patriarchate’s image of legitimacy. Any attempt to silence ROCA would only invite broad opposition in the outside world, and thus the Soviets were limited to establishing parallel churches under their control in non-Communist countries. Many Russian Orthodox communities in the United States and elsewhere have long hosted Moscow-aligned churches near ROCA ones, often just around the corner from one another.1

The renewal of Soviet Communism in 1991, portrayed in the West as a “collapse,” changed the equation, allowing the possibility of quietly re-absorbing ROCA into the Moscow Church. But as it became clear that the anti-Communist ROCA leaders were aware of the ongoing KGB/FSB secret police control over the Moscow organization and refused to play along, the Soviet Russian regime began moving more aggressively.

Exploiting the new, more friendly relations with foreign governments, the Moscow Patriarchate raised legal challenges in Western courts in an attempt to seize church property from the uncooperative ROCA. Arguing that all Russian Orthodox Church properties rightfully belonged only to the “official” Patriarchate, Moscow’s lawyers moved against ROCA churches in Bari, Italy; Ottowa, Canada; Copenhagen, Denmark; Geneva Switzerland; and throughout Germany.2

And, once the Oslo Accords allowed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to take over parts of Israel, in the PLO-occupied territories as well — where the KGB found greater success with the terrorist organization it had been funding and arming for decades.

As soon as PLO occupation forces arrived in Israel’s West Bank, where some ROCA institutions had long existed, they moved at Soviet Russia’s request. “In 1995 the Palestinian authorities confiscated an orchard and buildings belonging to the Orthodox Palestinian Society (affiliated with ROCOR), and transferred it to the Russian Federation government in Moscow,” protested an official with the Russian Orthodox Church in the U.S.3

The PLO’s Palestinian Authority (PA) dispensed with legal formalities entirely, hesitating only in reaction to possible negative publicity. By 1997, Patriarch Alexei II, head of the Moscow Church — and an active agent of the KGB — officially asked PLO head Yassir Arafat to seize the remaining ROCA properties. Arafat wasted no time, and on July 5, 1997, a number of heavily armed PLO troops descended on the 130-year-old Monastery of Abraham’s Oak on Hebron. When the monks and nuns refused to vacate the property, the PLO soldiers broke through the doors, physically assaulting the residents and dragging them out into the street.4 Eyewitnesses recount cursing and beating by the PLO troops, who injured the monastery’s Abbess and other monks and nuns, some so severely they required hospitalization.5

The Hebron property was immediately handed over to the Moscow Church, but the ensuing controversy delayed the PLO from continuing the seizures for nearly three years. Then, on January 15, 2000, Arafat sent armed troops to the ROCOR monastery in Jericho, where they gave the monks 30 minutes to leave. The PLO forces did not even bother with judicial procedures, carrying no document of legal authority for their action. Yet, while two members of the Russian Consulate watched, the monks were violently assaulted and physically dragged out of the facility at 10:00 am.6 During the chaos, two American nuns managed to slip inside. The Moscow representatives began dragging them out, but U.S. diplomatic intervention protected the nuns and allowed them to reside in the chapel for 75 days, even while 20 PLO troops and one Moscow cleric maintained control of the Jericho Gardens Monastery compound.7

Reaction in U.S. Congress brought an official condemnation of the Jericho seizure, but ultimately that church property also landed in Moscow’s hands.8 Two years later, the Moscow Patriarchate returned the favor during the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, when 200 PLO terrorists captured the church and held the monks hostage; Moscow’s Alexei II officially protested the use of nearby church property by Israeli troops who were fighting to free the occupied church, while completely ignoring the PLO occupation of the church itself.9

That same Alexei II has proven equally friendly with Arafat’s successor, new PLO head Mahmoud Abbas. During a visit to his Communist supervisors in Moscow, Abbas met with Alexei II, who thanked him for the Hebron and Jericho property seizures and promised the Moscow Church’s full support for the PLO struggle against Israel.10

References

1. Goldvug, N., “The politics of spirituality,” The Birch Online, www.thebirchonline.org, Spring 2005.

2. Budzilovitch, P.N., Report at the Sobor of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCA), www.monasterypress.com, Oct. 20, 2000 (meeting held in New York).

3. Kizenko, S., Letter to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, www.orthodox.net, undated (early 2000).

4. Kessel, J., “Russian Orthodox strife brings change in Hebron,” CNN Interactive/World News, www.cnn.com, July 9, 1997; Goldvug, N., Op cit.

5. Israeli Government Press Office, “Assaults on holy sites by the PA violates the Oslo Accords,” Likud of Holland, www.likud.nl, undated; “Russian nuns say they were beaten,” Associated Press, July 9, 1997, cited on United Jerusalem, www.unitedjerusalem.com; illustrations drawn by an eyewitness, presented to Monastery Press, www.monasterypress.com, downloaded Dec. 18, 2002 (but apparently no longer avaiable on the site).

6. Goldvug, N., Op cit.; “U.S. nuns land in middle of Russian church dispute,” CNN, Jan. 19, 2000, cited on United Jerusalem, www.unitedjerusalem.com; George, I., “More news about Jericho,” Redeeming the Time, www.orthodox.net, Jan. 16, 2000.

7. “U.S. nuns land in middle of Russian church dispute,” Op cit.; George, I., Op cit.; “American nun lobbies for contested convents,” Christian Century, Aug. 2, 2000, published on LookSmart Find Articles, www.findarticles.com.

8. Goldvug, N., Op cit.; Philipps, J., “Boehlert introduces resolution on Russian Orthodox Church,” press release from the office of Congressman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), www.house.gov, March 22, 2000.

9. “Peers plead for peace and justice,” Anglican Journal, World, www.anglicaljournal.com, May 2002.

10. “Peace begins in the Holy Land, Russian patriarch tells palestinian president,” AsiaNews, Moscow, www.asianews.it, Feb. 1, 2005.

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